


To Know, To Need, To Never Remember

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: ADD/ADHD Narrative, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Retelling of Events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of the events in SnK from a more intimate point of view. </p><p>(This narrative is written from the perspective of an Eren with inattentive-type ADHD, as that explains a lot of the inconsistencies in memory, instances of hyperfocus, and bouts of reckless impulsivity that Eren displays in SnK. One day I will figure out a more compelling synopsis for this, I swear to god.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After much discussion, a friend and I came to the conclusion that Eren's general disposition and behaviours are somewhat reminiscent of somebody who's grown up in the foggy, forgetful haze of inattentive-type ADHD. 
> 
> So I wrote a thing. Let me know what you think.

On some level, you’re aware that your father thinks of you as a failure.

What you’re not aware of is why.

You don’t know why he looks at you with such tired eyes, but you do know that he’s stopped trying to teach you anything, and because of that, he no longer scolds you when you don’t understand.

You suppose you’re happy about that.

But it makes you feel strange. The way his tired eyes pass over your face with so little resistance makes you uneasy. You are unable to explain why, even to yourself.

The world you live in is foggy, shot through with narrow beams of light that seem to pass over and by you before you can fully appreciate the dust motes dancing in them. They leave you feeling dazzled and breathless at first, but then you forget why, and once you’ve forgotten, you start to feel frustrated and uneasy, just like you do when you look at your father.

You suspect, in some of these fleeting moments of clarity, that he’s given up on you.

And then the light passes you by, and you forget again.

You do not yet know that the part of you that disappoints him is the same part of you that keeps the pain of his rejection to a dull, usually unconscious ache.

When he’s not there, you forget how it feels when he is, and forgetting is the small mercy and cruel reality of your condition, because when he returns, you are not prepared for his indifference.

Without fail, the first night of his return feels like the first time you’ve made acquaintance, because you do not know this man.

You know his face, and you feel as though you once knew warm affection as something to be reasonably expected in his voice, but he greets you with less meaning than your sister, and you don’t know what it means to see and know, if only a moment, that his eyes are more inclined to linger on a child who is not his.

You do not resent her for it.

You love Mikasa. When she came home with you, for the first and last time, you ceased to be able to recall a time when she was not there.

You cannot resent her for changing a life you don’t remember living.

You know she had a life before she became your sister, and you know you must have too, but even the memory of how she came to you is both distant and immediate, like it happened yesterday but not to you.

You can still hear their voices in the other room.

You can still feel your pulse jumping in your throat.

You can still feel that moment of indecision- _maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s not them, maybe everything’s something, you don’t know anymore, it almost made sense for a moment_ \- and then you remember that nobody lives here anymore, not in this cabin- _how did you get here? Dad told you to stay downstairs at the Ackerman’s place, did you wander off again, Eren? You don’t know, you had such a good reason, you swear, you can’t remember, you’re sorry, you just can’t remember_ \- and you hear one of them say a bad word and you know it’s not okay, only bad men call girls that and those people are dead, that lady- _dark, pretty, vacant_ \- is dead and they killed her.

You still see the knife in your hand as you draw it from the kitchen block, hear the creak of the floorboards as you creep down the hall. You still feel the wood of its hilt as you hide it behind your back, the roughness of the cord as you wind it around the handle, the splinters catching in your fingers as you hold the wrong end of the broom towards him, and you can feel the resistance of a throat- so close you can smell him, body odour and breath that stinks like rotten teeth- and the sudden jerk and shudder that runs down the pole and into your arms- so much weaker than you’d thought they were, shaking as you push him back with all your might- when you drive the knife you’d tied to the other end of it into his shoulder.

You still feel the knife- _again, or is it a different knife, you tied one to the broom handle but you almost maybe don’t remember doing it, it’s not the first one because the first one is still bloody in your hand and the broom knife is clean, was clean before you stabbed him but you almost maybe don’t remember taking the second knife out of the knife block, did you do it before you opened the door or after, did you do it at all or was it there when you got here, you can’t remember, you’re sorry, you just can’t remember_ \- in your palm and his arm pushing against your other hand and you can still hear the wetness of his breathing as he screams and as the knife is going into him and you remember the _anger_.

You still see her face- _dark, pretty, vacant, like the other one, but breathing, still breathing_ \- from where you’re standing in the door. You still see the mark beside her mouth.

You remember _rage_.

Fury that no amount of screaming and thrashing would ever be able to expend, fury you’ve felt before- _crying, crying with frustration once you’re alone because your father’s mouth is frowning and why can’t you focus, Eren, I wish you would at least try, why won’t you put in any effort, it’s like you don’t care at all and you don’t, do you, but you do care and you don’t know why you can’t focus, you don’t know, you can’t remember, you’re sorry, you just can’t remember_ \- but less directionless this time, less like you want to tear yourself apart to release a pressure you can’t explain and can’t express, purposeful, you have purpose and you have _hate._ He opens the door and you forget what you say because his hand is heavy on your head and his breath stinks and you have _hate_.

You’re not afraid.

You never doubt that you can kill them, and you never doubt that they should be killed.

Not until after.

Even when the third one has his fingers around your throat- _you have bruises for days or maybe weeks or even years, you can’t remember, how long do bruises last, bruises like black and purple stripes and it hurts to swallow and it hurts to breathe_ \- and panic hits your fury like cold water steaming on the edges of a flame, you do not doubt that he should die, and you scream at her- _dark, pretty, waking, you see the light go on inside her head and the part of you not dying watches it shake the vagueness from her eyes_ \- to do it- _fight, fight, fight to live, you can’t win if you don’t fight_ \- and you almost maybe don’t remember seeing her foot break the floorboard as she jumps because the room is getting so dark, it’s so much darker than it was even though the sun has already set.

It isn’t until your father is screaming at you, eyes looking, actually _looking_ at you and arms around you in a way that they haven’t been in so long- _or were they ever? You can’t remember, you’re sorry, you just can’t remember_ \- that you doubt, and you feel sick and sad and scared and you don’t like doubting so you don’t, you scream back, you scream back and louder because you don’t want to, you don’t want to be scared and you don’t want to be _wrong_ but he screams back at you and you are, you’re wrong and you don’t know why because you just wanted to make her look less- _dark, pretty, vacant_ \- dead.

And she’s still so empty, empty like her house is, like she’s dead too and you hate it and she says she’s cold so you wrap her in your scarf like that’ll make it better.

Your father tells her to come home with you, and she looks at you like it’s even a question.

_Of course_ she’s coming home with you.

She’s your sister- _where else would she go, what an idiot_ \- and when you do resent her, it is because she thinks you can’t do things, doesn’t believe you can do what you say you can do.

You don’t just believe, you _know_ you can. You _know_ , and it pisses you off that she treats you like a baby.

In those little bright moments where the fog thins out, you feel like you know, somehow, that she’s not like she was before, that she’s gone quiet and dark inside and she’s still standing in that room, jumping and breaking that floorboard, over and over again, and you don’t understand it because while you remember it and while you sometimes wake up crying and you don’t know why but you feel like you were drowning- _can’t breathe, this can’t be how it ends, you can’t die like this_ \- that room and everything that happened in it often feels more like a scary story than a memory to you.

But it’s not like that to her, and most of the time, you think you know that, even if you don’t understand it.

Nothing really feels real to you.

Not ever.

The stories Armin tells you about the lands outside the walls paint themselves in more vivid colours in your mind than the pictures in his book, and sometimes you get confused because you could have sworn you saw fire shooting far into the sky and tumbling down the sides of a rocky hill that stretched up just as high- _higher, if you knew what higher looked like_ \- as the wall, but there’s no picture like that in Armin’s book.

You see endless plains of sand so hot the air shimmers above them like the reflection of water that dances on the window behind where your mom keeps the washtub. You see expanses of water so wide and deep you can’t see the bottom or the edges, and things move far below your feet, fish so huge it’s like you’ve been shrunk to the size of one of the beetles on the pond behind Armin’s house. You see rock that hangs like icicles from not only the ceiling but the floor, great cold spires of stone protruding upwards and downwards towards each other like teeth waiting inside the mouth of an imaginary cave.

You don’t see walls.

You see green, green that seem to extend forever until it disappears from sight, meeting up with the blue of the sky somewhere far beyond the horizon, and you don’t see walls.

You learn, and you remember what Armin says to you. You can recite his teachings at a moment’s notice, precise and sure and brilliantly coloured, because you know, and you remember.

He praises you when you correct him not with page numbers- you never remember those, never, and you’re never sure if it’s that you’ve forgotten them or that you simply never knew- but with what page the book was opened to when you saw it last, with your innate tactile knowledge of how the pages lay against the cover, of the exact thickness the first half of the book has to be when it’s open to your page, to the last page you both pored over.

He doesn’t have many books, and you’ve been through this one- _it has pictures, the pictures help, you know the words because he reads them to you, your eyes can’t seem to help but jump from line to line and you can’t make sense of the bigger words, your father gave up on teaching you and Armin’s attempts always seem to turn into him reading to you, anyway_ \- so many times that the corners of the pages have worn soft with use, the spine wrinkled like an old man’s forehead or an old woman’s cheeks when she smiles.

They call him a heretic, and no matter how many times they- _strangers, friends, enemies, Armin, Mikasa, Mom_ \- tell you why, you always forget, and eventually you give up on asking.

You don’t understand why anyone would want to stay inside the walls forever.

The titans are a distant horror, one you can’t bring yourself to fear.

You _know_ you can defeat them.

When you turn twelve, you’re going to join the military, and then, when you’re done with your training, you’re going to join the Survey Corps, and then you’re going to take back the world for humanity.

And when you do, you’ll go see everything, all the places Armin’s told you about and more, and you’ll take Mikasa and your mom with you and they’ll see why you want to go outside, they’ll finally understand.

When Mikasa tells your parents that you want to join the Survey Corps, at first, you’re afraid that your father doesn’t care, that he really has given up on you, and the fear almost pushes through the fog that makes it tolerable.

But then he looks at you, really looks at you for the first time in a long time, and he gives you a key and promises you a secret, a secret, just between the two of you, and you know it must not be true.

Your mom continues to yell at you even after he’s left, but the key around your neck has forever cemented the necessity of fulfilling that aspiration in your mind, has irrevocably linked your importance and your worth to its weight, dependent on the realization of an idea that made your father speak to you with some measure of interest, with real investment in your growth, and however much your mother howls and however fiercely you love her, she cannot dissuade you.

For the first time in what seems like a very long time- _maybe ever, have you ever not felt this way_ \- you’re just happy.

You’re not frustrated or uneasy.

You know where your life is going, and you have something to look forward.

This day marks more than one momentous occasion for you.

It is also the day you finally get to see something taller than the wall.

Later, as your stomach knots with nausea and terror and pain from where Hannes’ bone and muscle juts into it as he runs with you slung over his shoulder, you watch your mother’s face- _dark, pretty, terrified_ \- slowly receding from view, even as it disappears into a dark space, even as it’s lost between jutting yellow teeth- _stalactites and stalagmites_ , you remember, but you can never remember which is which- and even before the titan’s mouth closes around her, you have already grasped what has happened with perfect clarity.

Your mother will never see the mountains.

She will never get to leave the walls.

Titans have robbed your mother of her chance to see the mountains, the ocean, the endless plains of sand.

You _hate_.

And this time, it stays with you, not buried deeply, but lingering just under your skin, vicious and eternal.

You have never known hate like this.

It is an acquaintance not easily unmet.

_(To Know, To Need, To Never Remember)_

You know you _can_ , so the first time you fall in the harness, you watch the sky tip forward and think ‘ _there’s been some mistake._ ’

Mikasa insinuates to you that it’s possible that you _can’t_ , and you resent her more fervently for that suggestion than you ever have for any other.

You’re convinced that you’re just missing some integral clue- _an angle, a roll of the hips or a slant of the spine_ \- and yet everyone seems intent on keeping it from you.

It frustrates you, but you know you _can_ , and the shock of failure fades with the afternoon into determination.

The second time, you fight incredible tension, you push with all the power your body has to offer, and for a few spare moments of elation, you are strong, and you are upright.

But you feel your muscles giving from the strain, and your second fall is just inevitable as your first.

As the sky starts to slip again, all you can think is ‘ _this can’t be happening._ ’

The world, inverted- _impossible, it’s impossible, this can’t be happening_ \- as it is, takes on a surreal- _impossible-_ nightmarish- _this can’t be_ \- quality.

You taste despair for the first time, not when you’re lying there with your head in the dirt and your ass pointed towards the sky, but when they let you down, when it’s over.

It’s brief and sour.

The exultation of discovering that you were not at fault- _of course not, impossible, you knew you could and you can, you knew_ \- and the pure ease that is another harness- _not faulty, like you, you’re not the faulty one_ \- spreads through you like a high.

You stare hard at Mikasa, still resentful, and she stares back.

You _knew_ , and you were right.

And you _know_ that you’ll drive the titans from this earth.

If you see the sadness in Mikasa’s dark eyes or notice the peculiar look of wonder in your instructor’s expression, you do not remember.

All you remember is the feeling of freedom from the ground, of being one leap closer to freedom from the walls, and of triumph so sharp and ferocious that it threatens to tear itself clean from your lungs in a feral scream.

The key you still carry around your neck is heavy against your breast.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this brutal cold I'm developing has been bizarrely fortuitous because it's making me appropriately foggy and I've been thinking about updating this anyway.
> 
> I have no idea where I'm going with this. It might deviate from or extrapolate on canon if I continue.

On the night of the disbanding, you feel restless.

You’re unsure whether it’s excitement or anxiety- you’ve finally made it this far, you’re actually _doing it_ instead of daydreaming about it, you’re doing it and that’s both exhilarating and terrifying- that has you fidgeting in your seat at dinner, but whatever it is, it heightens your hearing to a point that makes sounds blend together in a deafening cacophony, and you can’t seem to keep track of your conversation because Jean’s voice is grating against the inside of your skull.

As soon as you hear him saying it, you can’t force yourself not to listen. Your mouth is moving before you consider whether or not it’s a good idea to interject.

You’ve had this argument before.

You’ve fought with him enough times- never seriously, though, just a few scuffles, maybe a punch thrown here and there before the two of you are pulled apart- to know that’s he’s baiting you, that’s he’s just as jumpy and restless as you are, that he’s looking for a fight and you’ve made yourself available.

He’s grinning like an asshole.

He knows you’re going to swing.

“Oh, fuck it,” you murmur, and swing.

His fist hits the side of your face almost at the same moment that yours hits his, and the force both of you put into your punches sends you stumbling in a locked circle.

Adrenaline parts the fog. Your heart begins to race, but not with true rage, just unadmitted frustration and restlessness and resentment and self-destructive excitement. You are beyond self-examination. You are beyond thought, except for the little required to hear and respond to his goading.

You don’t even hear the shouts and laughter of the people around you. You’re barely even aware they’re still there.

_‘-gonna wipe that fucking smile off his face-’_

He swings. You duck. Air rushes over your head and into your lungs. _Excitement_.

You like to fight.

He swings again, hits your forearm, raised in a block. The impact resonates in your elbow, your shoulder.

Goading. He’s still talking, and it makes you angry.

Your eyes aren’t focusing properly. You see him, in motion, know instinctually where he is, but you don’t really _see_ him.

You jam your knee upwards, forwards. It connects. He can’t block in time.

He swings.

You duck. _Pressure_. Air rushing past your cheek.

You jab, back arched, legs braced, fist balled, wrist tense, moving from the elbow. Weaker than the shoulder. Faster. It’s unconscious, at this point. You connect. He staggers.

You think you hear Reiner shouting.

You’re not hearing. You’re not thinking.

He swings down. You dance back. _Excitement_.

Surge forward.

 _Resistance_.

Your momentum tips oddly. Your feet leave the ground. The room slides downwards.

You flounder in confusion before the room _spins_ and you feel hands and _Mikasa_ , she’s always interfering, you can suddenly hear again- _everyone is laughing_ \- heat explodes through your face- _they’re laughing at you_ \- and you scream at her to let you down, let you go but then Jean’s voice is grating against your brain again.

You stutter, pause, distracted.

The heat- _anger, humiliation_ \- evaporates from within you all at once, forgotten.

The ground is sudden and hard. The impact reverberates up into your tailbone, shoots through your spine.

It hurts.

Mikasa doesn’t apologize, but she doesn’t have to. You understand. Her explanation is more perfunctory than functional. You already know.

You’re more preoccupied with what Jean said.

“Where are you going to apply?” you ask her. You don’t know what answer you want to hear, or even what you expect to.

“I’ll join the Survey Corps,” she tells you, quiet and sure.

The fog is creeping back in, but you can’t mistake the twist of uncertainty that settles in your gut.

You tell her to join the Military Police, leaning on your half-formed- _half-understood, you always knew it would turn out this way_ \- suspicions.

She confirms what you’d always- _known, you knew this would happen but you don’t think, do you, Eren, you never stop to think_ \- feared was true, and you get angry, frustrated both at her and at yourself.

You argue until she tells you something you cannot argue against.

“I don’t want to lose any more of my family.”

It does not escape you that she’s holding the scarf you gave her- _it was always hers, though, weren’t you just holding onto it for her, was it ever really yours, you can’t remember_ \- burying her mouth and nose in it like the child she’s never been, not for as long as you’ve known her.

Armin is the one who interrupts your uneasy silence. It seems like that something he’s always doing. You have trouble telling apart the times he’s done it before, bleed together the memories of before and after the fall of Wall Rose.

You ask him the same question and he sits down beside you, bowing his head towards his knees for a moment before answering. You think he looks troubled, but the fog is creeping in more heavily than usual, thickened by the fatigue that follows the ebbing of adrenaline from your body.

“I chose the Survey Corps,” he tells you, more forcefully than you were expecting.

“Do you really mean that?” you ask him, adding “You?” like the word is supposed to mean something, which it does- which it did- right up until it leaves your mouth, because as the word escapes your lips, so does the meaning you need to understand why you’re asking at all.

Armin seems to understand, and that’s worse, because you don’t and something about the combination of his determined voice and the way he won’t meet your eyes makes you uncomfortable, makes you feel like you should protest further, but the time you think you’ve finally got it, you’ve finally figured out why the _“You?”_ matters, you’ve lost it again, and the words you use instead are all attempts to retrieve it, things it should be but isn’t.

“I know I’m physically weak,” he admits to you, “so when you consider that our final exam was a battle simulation, it’s a miracle I graduated at all-”

You struggle with the way he trails off meaningfully, because the meaning of his inflection is even more alien to you than your own.

Armin is, to you, an extension of yourself, and though you don’t recognize it now, though you won’t even become aware of it until you find that some of his thoughts and feelings have grown too dissonant for your heart to hear, what this means is that your unquestionable faith in your own abilities is also faith in his, that because you cannot conceive of being unable to do anything your mind can put picture to, his lack of confidence in himself is strange to you.

You find it almost offensive.

“You were the best in class when it came to theory, and you should be focusing on your strengths when you make your decision,” you tell him frankly, unsure whether you mean to encourage or scold. “Isn’t that what the instructor told us?”

The words leave your lips, and for a moment, you have the reason why the _“You?”_ matters.

Armin’s afraid, but he’s joining the Corps because you are, because his feelings of desire and obligation outweigh his feelings of fear. Armin is joining because he feels he has to help you realize the dream he fostered in you- _were you ever not dreaming of leaving the walls? Was Armin ever not there, was there ever a time when he wasn’t showing you his books and telling you his stories, you can’t remember, you’re sorry, you just can’t remember_ \- so long ago.

“There’s nothing brave about neglecting your strengths to pursue something you think is insane and will probably get you and others killed,” you say, and for a second, for just one blinding instant of clarity, you almost understand what Jean has been trying to tell you, almost grasp why it isn’t cowardice that keeps people from joining the Survey Corps, but something else.

And then he answers you- _“I’d rather die than become a burden like that!”_ \- and you forget.

 Hannes is there, across the street, talking with some people whose faces you know you won’t remember.

You salute when he spots you, and dimly register in your peripheral vision that Mikasa and Armin have done the same.

When he approaches, you’ve already forgotten what you were talking about and why you were uneasy.

He comments on your graduation and you comment on his promotion- you think you say something like, “I still can’t believe a drunkard like you became a captain of the Garrison,” but you don’t really mean it- and he laughs first and apologizes second.

His apology makes you uneasy because as much as you know you loved your mother- _and your father, your father too, you must have loved your father, what’s wrong with you, Eren, why is it always your mother you think of and never your father_ \- your memories of the world before the fall of Wall Rose are dreamlike and you don’t like to dwell on what could have been different when you already struggle to remember what was.

 He tells you the same story he always tells about your father, the one where he saved Hannes’ wife from an illness that had already taken many lives, and you begin to drift away from the conversation, muttering mostly to yourself that you can’t even remember how many times you’re heard him say that he regrets being unable to repay the favour.

You’re not really there, not really present or listening until he asks.

“Can you remember anything at all?”

_Confusion._

The pain is as sudden and crisp as the images are old and fleeting.

_Fear._

Light refracting off of a bead of liquid as it rolls down the silver needle of a glass syringe.

_“Eren!”_

_Pain._

 “My head feels like it’s going to split apart,” you gasp, and the images are like flashes, just sparks behind your eyes, so brief and so vivid and so _painful_ that your vision starts to go muddy with colour.

_“Eren, let me see your arm!”_

And he’s crying, _your father is crying and that terrifies you, you feel fear, fear, so much fear, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, he was supposed to love you and your mom was supposed to come see the mountains and he was supposed to show you what’s in the basement, what’s in the basement, you never found out what’s in the basement and he’s hurting you and you’re so afraid-_

“-ren! Eren!”

You wake up- _were you sleeping? You can’t remember,_ _you think you might have been dreaming but you just can’t remember_ \- thrashing and gasping and Armin is there, everything is alright, Armin is there.

He tells you that you’d collapsed, and that they’d had to carry you.

He tells you that you were dreaming.

He asks you what you were dreaming about, asks “What was the dream like, Eren?”

“What was it like?” you echo, wiping tears from your eye with the heel of your palm.

You don’t remember.

_(To Need, To Know, To Never Remember)_

Connie tells you that he’s joining the Survey Corps and Thomas tells you that it must be because of the speech you’d made- _you barely remember what you said, words just come rolling forward off your tongue sometimes and you can never seem to replicate or remember them, you’re sorry_ \- the night before.

Connie denies it, says it’s because he doesn’t want to end up on the same squad as Jean, and Thomas is talking and you’ve almost managed to gather your scattered thoughts enough to realize that he’s relying on your dislike of Jean- _you don’t really dislike him, though, you just want to make him understand you but he goads you when you try and you hate that but not him, he frustrates you but you don’t dislike him_ \- to convince you that he can make his own decisions.

You almost make it there, helped along by Thomas’ reflective commentary to the edge of that point of cohesion, but Sasha is a distraction unlike any other, and her timing is always impeccable.

Her interruption starts with an “excuse me, everyone,” and ends with an “I was able to steal some meat from the officers’ provisions,” and everyone stares at her as incredulously as if she’d said she just saw a titan turn into a person to use the mess hall.

It isn’t because you believe she’s incapable of such a feat- it’s because you can’t believe she hasn’t been caught yet. When food goes missing, fingers always start to point in one direction first: hers.

You’re not really listening to what Connie and Mina are saying to Sasha- _“Put it back! With all the land we’ve lost, meat is valuable-”_ until she responds.

“We’ll be able to raise plenty more cows and sheep when we reconquer the land,” Sasha asserts.

You recognize your own unshakeable faith in her tone.

You’ve always been the crazy one for believing that to be true. No one’s ever really listened to you, and no one takes Sasha seriously, but in this moment, when she’s speaking with yours words, they do.

You don’t know if it’s the meat, if it’s just that they want it and are willing to humour her for it, but their words light a fire in you.

 _‘We’ll win this,’_ you think, _‘Humanity will strike back.’_

And then there’s a face.

This is the second time you’ve seen something taller than the wall.

It is the same face you saw five years ago.

The explosive heat of its appearance blasts you from the ledge before you can react, and for a few breathless moments, you’re free-falling and you can’t see for the steam.

For the second time in as many days, adrenaline parts the fog of your existence.

“Switch to three-dimensional maneuver!” you bark with all the unquestionable authority of your instructor, and if you weren’t doing the same, you’d see that they’ve obeyed without ever registering who it was who shouted.   

One is still falling, and you hesitate, and then another is falling, speeding past you like a projectile.

 _‘Sasha,’_ you realize. Samuel has jerked to a stop far below, inverted but alive, and Sasha has her feet braced against the wall.

For a moment, you almost believe everything’s going to be alright.

And then the wall shakes.

The wall below you bursts inwards in a billowing cloud of grey and you see your mother’s face disappearing again, and you _hate_.

You _hate_ , you never stopped hating, your hate was only sleeping.

You don’t hear them begin to panic and you don’t question your own authority when you scream at them to man the cannons and assist you.

You don’t see the shock on their faces or register when they haven’t followed you up the wall.

You don’t fear or hope or even _think_.

You just _hate._

“Haven’t seen you in five years,” you murmur, like you know it’s listening, like it can understand, and it swings an endless arm towards you and you surge _forward_ , leap off the wall towards it, heat and pressure passing overhead like Jean’s too-slow punches from the night before except _bigger_ , and you don’t think, you don’t hesitate, you just aim and fire.

Your hook embeds itself deep in the raw muscle of the titan’s arm and you fire the other one as you swing, propelling yourself up and over to its shoulder, glittering shards of shrapnel visible out of the corner of your eye- _the cannon, it was aiming for the cannon_ \- and you become even angrier than you were before because it _knows_ what it’s doing and it knows what it’s done and your mother will never see the mountains and you _hate_ it for that, you hate it and it has to die.

 _‘Even if this is the only thing I do, the only titan I kill,’_ you half-think, half-do, _‘that’s enough, that could be enough.’_

Your blades are descending towards its neck and your spirits have hit a high of wild malicious delight you’ve never felt before when the air suddenly bursts again.

You fire your hooks where the titan should be and continue to fall.

You anchor yourself to the wall and stare.

The titan is gone.

You failed to kill it.

It was right there, and you failed.

You try to apologize, but they won’t let you, and the once-idle work you were doing only minutes ago has been lost in a frantic shuffle of animation- soldiers are suddenly teeming walls and rooftops, emerging like ants from the woodwork.

One of them tells you to go to headquarters to make a report on your close contact with the colossal titan.

You don’t.

You find Armin and Mikasa.

_(To Need, To Know, To Never Remember)_

Armin is panicking because Armin thinks too _much_ in situations where you don’t think at all, just like he always does, just like you knew he would.

You remind him not to.

Your superior officers tell you that you’re in the middle guard.

Mikasa is not.

Mikasa is, along with the other elite trainees, in the rear guard, and she greets her separation from you with more panic than you consider prudent or necessary.

“Don’t get killed,” she tells you urgently, and you just sort of look at her, trying to decide whether or not you should be offended.

You won’t.

You’re not dying here.

It’s impossible.

You still have to see the ocean, and she still has to see the mountains.

The second you’re all gathered together is the same second you take control of your team, asserting yourself as their leader with the unthinking confidence of the fearless, and their vibrant faith in your strength resonates in your veins like a drug.

You can’t die here.

It’s impossible.

The front guard has fallen.

You watch Thomas’ eyes fill with tears just before he slides out of view, and there’s a blank space in your brain that believes that you can still save him, that if you just catch the titan that swallowed him, you could cut it open and have him spring out whole and well like the grandmother in that story about the girl and the wolf that Armin once told you.

You’ve never seen a wolf.

You hope they’re not as big as titans.

They’re screaming after you, your squad, and you don’t know why until there’s a face below you, looming close and pallid like a sick moon.

You roll backwards, trying to get clear of its questing mouth, and almost all of you succeeds.

After you hit the rooftop and come to a halt, you lay there, and it takes you a long moment to realize why you can’t feel your leg.

Even when the realization comes, you don’t really believe it, and you don’t have the energy to look.

It’s impossible.

You can’t slay titans with one leg.

It has to be impossible.

You hear them screaming and you know they’re dying, objectively, but that’s impossible too, because they can’t die.

If they’re dying then you’re losing.

They’re winning, they have to be winning, and your leg isn’t gone, it’s just numb.

You’re not bleeding to death.

You’re just catching your breath.

You hear Armin screaming, and suddenly _everything_ is real and _nothing_ matters but him.

You can’t- _a blue afternoon sky over green grass and you’re sitting by the river when he comes running up with the book for the first time, not just a book but the book, the book that turns Armin from your best friend into your visionary, your window to the world outside the walls_ \- lose Armin.

_“The outside world must be so much bigger than inside these walls, Eren!”_

You can’t.

_“If only we could see it for ourselves someday.”_

You _can’t_ lose Armin.

You’re not even sure how you do it.

You’re so tired, and you don’t know what to do with the empty space below your knee.

But somehow, you get there- _your fingers are sticky with blood as you fumble with the latches that release your hooks and you’re used to doing this on your feet, not your knees, so you’re not sure if it’ll work but it has to_ \- and the feeling of Armin’s wrist in your palm is a cool triumph in the noxious heat of the titan’s mouth.

You throw him, moving from the shoulder- stronger than the elbow- and he’s so light that he sails out onto the adjacent rooftop in a clean arc.

He calls for you and he’s panicking again, screaming like you’re about to die.

“I’m not dying here, hell no,” you reassure him, climbing as best you can with half a leg and reaching for him, and he needs to reach back but he’s just staring at you, wide-eyed, so you start coaxing. “You taught me about the outside world and I want to see it for my-”

It’s suddenly dark and you can’t feel your fingers and he’s screaming your name again and you can’t feel your wrist and you’re falling.

_‘Fuck.’_

It’s hot.

You land with a splash and there are bodies everywhere and the water you’re sitting in is itching at you, eating away at your skin like a burn.

“This isn’t…” you mumble, but it’s so hot that it hurts to breathe and your words falter.

_“Hot. It’s so hot.”_

Someone else is alive, but just barely.

You hear him muttering but by the time you’ve turned, he’s begun to sink and is going silent.

You can’t die here.

It’s impossible.

You have to see the outside world.

You’re not sure when it is that you start to cry, but your nose is running and your skin is itching and you’re so tired and this is all _wrong_ , you _can’t_ die here, the universe is wronging you and you’re offended and angry and despairing and you _hate_.

You’re not- _every last titan_ \- giving up.

You have to kill the- _every single one_ \- titans.

You can’t die- _kill them all_ \- here.

You just _can’t_.

_Hate._

_Hatehatehatehatehatehate-_

You’ve never felt so strong.

_Hatehatehatehatetitans titans titans hate titans so much kill them all every last one not so big now are they gonna kill-_

There’s no fog.

_Every-_

There’s no light.

_Last-_

There’s just nothing.

_One-_

Nothing but _hate_.

You kill- _killkillkillkillkill more tons more every last one_ \- and you’ve never felt- _darkprettysister Mikasa_ _sistersistersister don’t you touch my fucking sister_ \- so strong and you’ve never fought- _killkillkillkill ThomasThomasThomas Thomas_ _is in there split ‘em open tear ‘em apart_ \- more or thought less.

You’re smiling when you wake up instead of crying.

“…Eren?”

Armin’s voice shocks you out of your daze and everything comes rushing back in a confused flood.

You’re kneeling on unfamiliar ground and Armin’s close but you can see swords glinting in a semi-circle around you through the gaps in Mikasa’s hard protective stance.

“ _Eren_ ,” she gasps and you’re puzzled, completely bewildered by these circumstances and her look of tense relief.

“Eren, are you fully conscious now?” Armin’s hands are gripping at your shoulders and you don’t understand what’s happening. “Tell me everything, _talk to me, Eren, we’ll figure something out!_ ”

You don’t understand.

“-hear that?”

The soldiers are muttering amongst themselves, their swords bobbing and weaving nervously in their fists.

“-intends to kill and eat us-”

“Wait,” you mumble. _‘What’s going on here? Why are they looking at me like that? What’s happening?’_

A man is shouting.

A man is shouting about you being a traitor.

Your ears are still ringing, confused by the suddenness of his loud voice against the relative quiet of the soldiers’ unease, but you think he just said he means to kill you.

“-we’ll shoot without hesitation!”

You look, and it’s true.

There’s a cannon pointing at you.

There’s a cannon pointed towards the inside of the walls, and it’s pointed at you.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” he booms, “what are you really?”

You look at him.

“Human or titan?”

You _stare_ at him.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking me, sir,” you yell back.

He accuses you of being a titan.

He tells you that people saw you coming out of a titan.

He yells, and panic begins to ripple through the ranks.

You hear people discussing moving in and killing you before you can do _something_ , you’re not sure what it is that they expect you to do, but they’re terrified of it.

You’re foggy, and for once, it’s noticeable. You can’t keep up.

Mikasa growls threats and Armin screams pleas and you stare down at your arm where the sleeve is gone.

“I’ll ask again,” the man shouts, “What are you really?”

You understand that you need to act quickly, to say something, but everything is misty and surreal.

“I-”

Armin and Mikasa have placed themselves between you and the other soldiers.

You can’t lose them.

You can’t fuck up this time.

You can’t lose your only remaining family.

“I’m human.”

You mean to yell it, but it comes out a statement, resonant and clear rather than forceful, unsure rather than firm.

“Please don’t resent us for this.”

The man is raising his hand in a gesture you recognize and Mikasa is grabbing you and Armin is pleading.

_‘This can’t be happening.’_

Mikasa hoists you up onto her shoulder and your key- _crying, your father is crying and you have to go to the basement, it is essential that you go to the basement_ \- slips out of your shirt and you _remember_.

You hear the low boom of the cannon firing and you don’t think.

You act.

Your teeth sink into the meat of your hand and you _protectprotectprotectprotect stop cannonball protect Armin protect Mikasa find basement what’s in the basement-_

You’re still in the titan when you wake, this time.

It’s hot.

You can’t breathe.

You thrash, burst out from between the muscles with a gasp and stare at where your hands seem to disappear into it before pulling them free.

Urgency hastens you.

You need to go to the basement.

You tell Armin and Mikasa that you need to go to the basement, that the answer is there, you _remember_ , for once, you actually remember.

You need to go but you don’t know how to.

Your nose begins to bleed.

You tell Armin that what happens next is for him to decide.

You trust Armin.

Armin is your window, your visionary. He sees things you don’t. He sees farther.

You see the light go on in his eyes and you trust him to make the right decision.

You don’t catch everything he says, but you see it when his arms lock in a salute.

And you see that the arm of the man commissioning your death doesn’t fall.

_(To Need, To Know, To Never Remember)_

Everything that follows is a blur- everything happens too fast for you to comprehend, and people ask you questions too suddenly for you to answer them.

Armin says he thinks you can block the hole in Wall Maria and Pixis- _such a strange way to meet such important people_ \- asks you if you can do it.

You can.

He’s looking at you without scorn or disbelief. For once in your life, someone is looking at you and asking if you can do the impossible instead of telling you that you can’t and you _can_ , you can do anything.

_(To Need, To Know, To Never Remember)_

_Savetrostsavetrostsavetrost kill all the titans savetrost a step for humanity finally a victory for humanity-_

You’re confused.

You’re not sure what you’re doing.

You’re not sure what your purpose is, and you’re fading.

You don’t know what your body’s doing.

It feels like maybe you just hit something.

Something on- _Mi-_ your fa- _kasa?_ \- ce.

Sudden pressure.

Falling.

You’re sitting.

It’s warm.

Too warm.

The blankets are too heavy but you’re too tired to push them off.

Mom and Mikasa- _so little, wasn’t she taller_ \- at the sink.

Dad at the table.

You think you’re sitting in a patch of sunlight. It’s so hot.

You’re so tired.

 _Pain_.

You jolt awake. Your arm is cramping, but the cramp is fading, and you’re getting sleepy again.

Armin is banging on the window.

_“What happened wiping out the titans?”_

His voice sounds muffled.

_“Don’t you hate them? They killed your mother!”_

You peer over your shoulder at him, puzzled.

Your mother is standing at the sink.

_“What happened to going outside, Eren?”_

Why would you want to go outside? What good would that do?

_“What happened to exploring the world outside?”_

You stir.

_“Far, far beyond the wall, there is flaming water, expanses of ice, and snowfields of sand, spreading as far as the eye can see. I’ve been wondering if you still remembered it, but that conversation was what made me decide to enlist in the Survey Corps, wasn’t it?”_

You open your eyes, troubled.

“The world outside..?”

It seems important, somehow.

It seems so important.

You surge upwards from the bench, desperate to remember _why_.

_“Tell me, Eren, what did you want to see the outside world for?”_

That’s obvious.

Because it’s _your world youworldyourworldyourworld humanity’s world and it belongs to you a step for humanity a victory for humanity block the hole save trost savetrostsavetrostsavetrost-_

Your body feels like it’s being crushed under the weight of the boulder.

Mikasa and Armin.

You see Mikasa and Armin.

_Movemovemovemove they can’t be here they’ll get eaten-_

_“Tell me, Eren, what did you want to see the outside world for?”_

_Because it’s your world-_

_Because seeing it is freedom, because you’ll fight anyone or anything that tries to take that freedom from you, because it’s yours, yourworldyourworldyourworld humanity’s world and you will fight for it you’ll fight them you’ll fightfightfightfightfightfight-_

The boulder slams into the hole with a seamless finality that you can’t appreciate because the sudden absence of it from your shoulders makes you unstable and the sudden loss of purpose drains you of all energy and you fall into a sitting position in front of it, barely conscious of hitting the ground.

You’re so tired.

Armin is shouting and pulling at you and you’re too hot and your head is rolling back because you’re too tired to support it and you can just barely see the titans creeping up behind you but you can’t muster up the energy to care, you’ve succeeded, you can’t die now, you’ve already won.

He’s like a hummingbird, impossibly agile, almost too fast to see, and you know him for who he is the moment you see the wings of liberty on his back.

Only much later will you find the time to feel weird about the fact that you were half-emerged from the neck of a titan the first time your childhood hero saw you.


End file.
